Our Mission
Our collaboratory aspires to leverage the synergies from multiple academic disciplines to tackle some of the most pressing food, forestry, and agricultural-based production and distribution challenges to efficiently, reliably, and sustainably deliver safe and affordable end products to the consumers while fostering economic development.
Our Major Goals
- Develop new academic collaborations across disciplines and universities to address important food, fiber, and forestry supply chain opportunitites.
- Share the knowledge, skills, and tools needed for local farmers, ranchers, and other stakeholders to make informed decisions for their role in the downstream supply chain and enhance their sustainability.
- Develop research and Extension efforts that inform the formulation, adoption, and implementation of effective and inclusive public policy.
- Facilitate new food entrepreneur teaching and outreach efforts.
Our Major Objectives
- Evaluate alternative supply chain structures that would improve efficiency/resilience/responsiveness.
- Develop optimization and simulation models of existing and alternative supply chains.
- Determine sensitivity of vital parameters and inputs to fluctuations and responses within intermodal and intramodal networks.
- Research the role of new supply chain technologies and the barriers to their large-scale adoption.
- Address the potential for decommodization of supply chains (multiple paths for products)
- Local versus traditional
- Attribute-specific (organic, sustainable, etc.)
- Understand the implications for producers and consumers of alternative supply chain structures
- Fragilities within rural communities
- Demography
- Tax implications
- Potential changes in the ability to supply raw products
- Potential changes in the satisfaction of existing consumer demands
- Develop improved solutions for logistics, queuing, and transportation
- Coordinate with industry to provide precision solutions when applicable
- Arrange frequently related seminars, workshops, and short-courses to train and develop a highly-skilled rural workforce.
- Utilize findings to improve the relevance of appropriate resident and non-resident educational curriculum.
- Disseminate results to local and regional policy-makers and strategic stakeholders.
- Conduct economic analyses of policy interventions, including analyses of the distributional effects of public policy.
- Develop web-based decision tools for businesses to improve competitiveness within supply chain structures.
- Develop relational infrastructure between national and regional food logistics.
- Develop new systems for information transmission and visibility along the supply chain (food safety, sustainability verification, attribute information).
